


Sleepwalking

by argle_fraster



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Graphic Description, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Post-Apocalypse, Sexual Assault, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:12:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war is done and the humans have lost, Lydia finds herself the war prize of Peter Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepwalking

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bingo card squares: Lydia/Peter [Utopia] & Lydia/Derek [Obsession]

She thought it would be better when she was taken from the cells, where there was constant moaning and crying, the festering stench of too many bodies and rotting corpses that had yet to be removed. She thought it would be better to be in the main halls, in the mansion itself, and she'd even allowed herself to hope, to _wish_ , on the day she was taken from the prison bars and led through the hallways decorated with gold-framed paintings and lavish paneling. And she'd been a fool, always a fool, a fool to think that it would be better - there is no better. There will never _be_ a better, and she should have realized that a long, long time ago.

Lydia Martin sits in a plush chair with high arms and a sloped, arc of a back, hands resting in her lap, looking outside the window at the first sign of fall. The browning, orange leaves are trickling down from the branches with the breeze, and she wants to reach out to touch them, even just to press her fingers against the glass that separates her from the outside - a world she hasn't stepped into for over a year - but she can't, because there are chains rubbing her wrists raw and she is too tired to continue fighting them.

Instead, she just watches; she watches the colors wave, the trees sigh, and wonders if this fall will be her last.

He comes to see her, like clockwork. He presses close, noses into her hair - this isn't the worst part. She can deal with the stench of him, the obnoxious cologne that they all like to wear to show they have status and power, but it's the mental games he plays that Lydia can't stand.

He touches her face, her neck. His fingers trail down her neck to her collarbone and leave warm trails of contempt behind.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he murmurs, near her ear, against her jaw. His breath is hot. It makes her hair stand on end. "The world we've built, the majesty we've created. We have designed our own utopia. And you're here to share it with us."

"It's not shared," Lydia tells him. She thinks of the humans kept in the cells in the basement, the people kept for sport - for fun, for being prey. 

He laughs. It's an awful sound. "You have to find the exquisite beauty in such miserable conditions. It's what the human poets of old did, isn't it? Wretched creatures always seem to revel in being so unhappy. It sparks such creativity and desire."

His fingers start to close around her neck, and she jerks away. He doesn't seem surprised by the move, but he also doesn't step back. He stays where he is - in her bubble, caressing her skin, invading her personal space.

"Are you going to kill me?" she whispers.

"No, darling," he replies. "We will lead such a glorious life together, you'll see."

As he leaves the room, darkness settling in behind him, clouding her life, Lydia wishes the answer had been yes.

\--

When the Wars were going on, Lydia had thought that was it - that her life would revolve around battles, around losing and gaining ground, losing and gaining soldiers who were never meant to fight. At least then, she had a purpose. She was good at formulating plans and developing strategies; she was good at reading maps and deciphering patterns. She'd been a tactical genius, near the top of the chain of command, and she'd been good at it - she just hadn't prepared for the betrayal. Then again, maybe no one ever is.

Back then, dying had been the worst thing imaginable. It's odd how things can change.

\--

He dresses her in silk. He finds it charming and likes to run his hands over it - he likes to run his fingers across the front of her bodice, across the ruffles and the pinched bits of fabric that drape off her breasts. Lydia stares at herself in the mirror and doesn't recognize the image she sees reflected back. She doesn't know when her cheeks sunk in so much, or when her eyes got so haunted.

"You are a prize in society," he tells her, as he fastens a jeweled, glimmering necklace around her throat. It looks more like a collar than a gift, and Lydia doesn't miss the irony there - the wolf leashing his human slave. "You will be the highlight of the ball, the envy of everyone else there."

When the wolves won, they took over everything. The old remnants of human civilization have been preserved only where the werewolves wished them to be; the rest were destroyed, annihilated, wiped clean so that a new reign could begin.

Lydia can't tear her eyes away from the image in the glass. His hands are on her shoulders, fingers digging into the silk and skin.

"You were so hard to get, my gingersnap," he whispers, nose pressed into the crook of her neck. He's marking her, smearing his scent across her flesh, and the thought of it makes her skin crawl so much she nearly drops, knees shaking. "Do you know how many humans I had to bribe and torture? Not at the same time, of course."

"Why me?" she chokes.

His mouth is flush against her neck. "Because you are special. Do you know how special you are? A tactical officer in the human's army. And you're more than that. Do you remember the night you were taken?"

Lydia remembers only pieces of that night - and from the bits she remembers, she'd like to keep it that way. The memories are dark and painful, full of screams and dying gurgles, of the pink foam of blood and the dull, aching thud of her own heart in her throat.

He pulls away. He's dressed in coattails; she should find it funny.

"I'll tell you, sometime," he promises. Every promise from his lips is laced with poison. "I'll tell you why you are so valuable, why every wolf wants to own you. But not tonight. Tonight we attend the ball, and you will be the prize on my arm."

Lydia wants to throw up, but there isn't enough in her system for it to be anything other than dry-heaving.

\--

There are other humans at the ball - other humans like her, who have been taken as war prizes, as goods to sign away and keep in cages. Lydia should be glad that she's here, walking amidst the crystal chandeliers and glistening champagne flutes, and not rotting away in the dungeons without ever seeing the sky again. But she's still a prisoner, and she still can't reach the sky out her window, and maybe it's worse this way, being so close without actually being able to touch it.

Some of the humans are voluntary; or, at least, when presented with the choice, they chose to submit to the winning side. Lydia stays as far away from them as she can, latched to his arm, because they make her ill.

The wolves are laughing. They toast each other over special wine, over alcohol brewed to their specifications, over the bodies of the humans they killed to rise to the top. They are laughing, and he is holding her arm like a vice, and Lydia can't breathe. She stares at the gems hanging from the chandelier, and tries to remember what it felt like to be alive.

\--

She learns what his name is at the ball - it's the first time she' s heard it. They stand near one of the buffet tables covered in a white cloth, and she tries to choke down some watered-down liquor just to keep him happy.

A man approaches them who looks young. He's obviously a werewolf, dressed like the rest of them, but he's young. His face is too angular, his eyebrows too dark, his expression too pinched, and he's the most beautiful thing that Lydia has seen in a year.

"Uncle Peter," he says, with a polite nod and his hands shoved into his pockets. For a moment, Lydia actually registers the fact that he has pockets in dress pants. It's a shock of her old life, the life she thought she'd forgotten entirely. "It's good to see you looking well."

"Derek," he - _Peter_ \- replies. "I didn't think you'd come."

Derek's eyes flick to Lydia for a second, a long second, as if he's unsure what to say in front of her. After all, she's human - she's human, and she was a commanding officer in the military during the wars. But she's also a prisoner. She's on a gold and jewel-studded leash held between the fingers of a madman.

"I thought it proper," he says.

This seems to please Peter, who holds out his glass as if in a toast. "And that, my nephew, is the most important thing, is it not?"

"Of course," Derek agrees, but his gaze strays to Lydia once more as they both drink.

\--

She spends the night obsessed with the thought of him - she knows nothing about Derek, except that he's a werewolf, and he's the nephew of the man holding her captive and using her as his own private plaything. But as she is paraded around the party, and introduced to the other guests like a new pet, she can think only about the way he looked at her.

She thinks there was sympathy in his gaze - compassion. She thinks that he might actually care that she's being held against her will, being used. By the end of the night, she's convinced herself that he will seek her out again, to help.

There's a part of her mind - the rational, intelligent part, the part that was so useful a year ago and so very, very useless now - that tries to disperse the thought, but it's too deep. She can think of nothing else. Derek is her shining beacon of hope in a world that's been stripped of everything worth living and fighting for.

\--

The leaves continue to fall, and Lydia watches them from her chair. The world outside is spinning on without her. Sometimes she thinks of the humans still in the dungeons, in the cells - do they know that the seasons are changing, without being able to see it happening? Are they still alive?

The welts on the inside of her wrists itch when they heal.

"You are the best thing I've ever owned," Peter whispers, when he's drunk and stinks of wolf-liquor, pulling her up from her chair with too-tight fingers. "What a badge of honor you are."

She doesn't fight, but the shackles on her arms clank angrily together when he pushes her across the floor. It's not the first time that he's gotten handsy, but it _is_ the first time that he's tried this - this many allowances, this terrible breach of her personal autonomy. She knows what's coming; Lydia isn't a fool. Still, she tries to fight it, hoping to postpone it long enough for the alcohol to take effect, hoping that he'll pass out before he can do anything.

Her shoulders hit the mattress, and he is upon her, straddling her waist.

"Lydia, Lydia," he says, over and over again, as his mouth trails down her neck to her collarbone. He's pushing the chemise out of the way. She tries to fight, but it's been too long since she's been allowed to move around, and her muscles are sluggish and heavy with disuse. "My brilliant, immune prize."

"What?" Lydia rasps, mouth very dry. She tries to push at his shoulders with her bound hands as best she can.

Peter laughs. "You, my darling, my darling girl. My beautiful, beautiful girl."

He's rambling, and she pushes at him again; he must have drank a lot, because she succeeds in getting him off-balance enough to move him off of her form.

"What did you say about me?" she asks. "Being immune?"

He tries to bite at her wrist, and his aim is very off. He ends up snapping his teeth at nothing in the air. "I can't turn you."

"Why not?"

"No one can," he laughs, again. He's very, very drunk, and he's already lagging - she's lucky. She's so, so lucky, because he's too drunk to do anything, and she's won this round. She'll remain intact tonight, and he'll sleep off the liquor in a haze. "You can't be turned. Lydia, Lydia, my darling Lydia."

She waits until he's passed out to get up, careful to keep the shackles around her hands quiet. She goes to the far end of the room, in the darkest corner near the bookshelves, and crouches down, wrapping her arms around her knees. There, she shakes and shakes and cries, stuffing a fist in her mouth to muffle the sounds, because she knows now - she knows why she was sought out, why she didn't die in the last battle, and why she didn't wake up, the morning after, with a brand new set of canines.

\--

"I'm sorry," Derek says, when he comes in through the door without waiting for it to be opened. He looks different without the tuxedo, but he's still dressed in black. "I thought that my uncle would be here."

She wasn't expecting it, and it catches her off-guard, and she hates that it takes her so many fumbled seconds to come back to herself - she used to be better than this. Before her world was destroyed, she was better.

"He's not," she tells him, even though it's obvious. "It's okay."

Derek pauses. He looks awkward by the door, like he doesn't know what to do. Lydia is struck by how young he looks there. Younger men than him died for the cause, and felt older.

"Please," Lydia whispers.

"I-" his voice trails off, but his hand drops from the doorknob. He looks her up and down, and she notices that his gaze lingers not on the stretch of fabric across her chest - the way Peter likes it, the way Peter dresses her, like his own personal doll - but at the iron around her wrists. "I was against this," Derek says, very softly. "I know it doesn't mean anything, but I didn't want this to happen."

"I know," she says.

He shrugs, helplessly. "My uncle, he... he's very important. He's friends with very powerful people, and he's allowed... liberties."

Lydia knows that she isn't a _liberty_ ; she isn't an exception at all, she's the norm. The humans lost, and nothing can change that fact.

"My name," Lydia manages to get out, swallowing half of it down, "is Lydia."

"Lydia," Derek repeats. "I'm sorry."

"Do you hate the humans?" she asks, and she isn't sure why she does. She's so desperate for anything to cling to, to find something that she can believe in. She's going to build this man - this _werewolf_ \- up into something he's not, and even though she knows this, she can't stop herself.

Something flashes over his face. "No," he replies. "No, I don't."

He leaves before she can ask him anything more, but she sits for hours going over his words when he's gone, repeating them to herself like a mantra.

\--

The first she learns about a resistance group, of a guerilla group of humans who survived, is when Peter is called out to take care of them with several other wolves and Lydia overhears snatches of the conversation as they are preparing to depart.

It's like being given a gift, knowing that Peter will be gone for awhile. Lydia sits on her chair, unmoving, staring out the window and willing her heartbeat to calm down so that he can't detect that she is elated by the situation, that she is going to take advantage of everything she can. When he is ready to leave, he slides a hand around her neck, curling fingers over her shoulder.

"I won't be gone long," he says, and she tries not to squirm away when he plants a kiss against her temple. He shifts, moving them both so that the kiss is against her mouth, and it's only by thinking of Derek and his ocean-gray eyes that Lydia keeps her meager lunch down when Peter wrenches her lips apart with his own.

It takes all her effort to keep her heart steady as he leaves the room. And even after he's gone, she stays where she is for a long time, focusing on the rhythm of her own breathing, just in case he can hear her as he moves away.

\--

She isn't sure what she expected once Peter was gone. She's been given free-reign of his apartment rooms, but is still kept under lock and key. One of the other wolves brings her regular meals, and there is never a chance to sneak away. She had thought, perhaps, in her mind, that things would come together once he was gone, and instead she feels more a prisoner than ever before - a slave without a master, still shackled and captive.

She doesn't expect Derek to appear on the third day.

"Peter's gone," she says, numbly, when the man comes in the front door.

"I know," Derek replies. "I didn't come here for him."

A swell of hope nearly forces all the air from her throat. "You came for me?"

"When you were fighting," Derek says, and his gaze goes somewhere else, over her shoulder and far away, focused on things she can't see, "what unit were you in?"

It seems like a lifetime ago. Lydia focuses, unsure where the line of questioning is going. "I was an officer in the tactical division of Unit 58W4."

Derek deflates visibly, sagging against the doorway. Lydia isn't sure what to make of it; the reaction is so strong and so unexpected, that she can't make heads or tails of it. She has no rationale to attach to it. She waits until Derek moves a weary hand over his face, and then begins to laugh.

"I knew it," he says, and she thinks it's mostly to himself. "I knew you looked familiar."

"Were you there? At the... at the end, of the battle, were you there?"

She hopes the answer is no - her manufactured savior will be shattered if he was, if he was part of the carnage. She is beyond relieved when Derek shakes his head, though his gaze still won't settle on her.

"You asked me the other day if I hated humans," he says, suddenly devoid of emotion.

"I remember."

"There was one that I... that I cared about," he stumbles over the words. Maybe he's reliving it, lost in his own memories. "I knew I'd seen you before. He was in your unit."

It's a shock to hear, and Lydia isn't sure which part of it is more surprising - that there was a human, or that there was a man. "What was his name?"

"Stilinski."

It sounds familiar. Lydia has to focus to try and place the name with a face, and comes up with what she thinks is the accurate one: a scrawny young man, short cropped hair, and a lopsided smirk of a smile.

"What happened to him?" Lydia asks, as gently as she can.

"I don't know," Derek answers.

It's likely that he died. Most humans did - it was only a handful that were taken in as captives, as prizes, to display the glory and power of the werewolves who fought and won.

Lydia wants to say that she's sorry, but she can't force the words out. There are too many things to be sorry for, and she can't muster the energy to care about one she never really knew. She stays where she is, fingers laced together and shackles clanking as iron meets iron, and neither of them speaks for a very long while.

"They would have torn you apart," she finally says. It's not really what she meant to come out.

"Yeah."

Lydia isn't sure if it's worse or better after he goes, and she is alone with her thoughts once more.

\--

The thing is, Peter doesn't come back.

Peter never comes back, because the humans - the small resistance group the wolves thought would be so easy to beat - there are more of them than anticipated. Lydia doesn't know where they came from, or how they survived and hid, but against all odds, they are _winning_.

Lydia doesn't know what happened to Peter. She only knows that the wolves start to leave, and the activity in the mansion dissolves, and she gathers that she has been forgotten - the discarded possession of a lost man.

\--

It takes half a day to break the shackles, and her wrists are raw and red and bleeding by the time she does. Her dress is ruined; the silk is stained with the aftermath of her escape and soaked through. She gathers everything she can that she thinks might be useful, and anything she thinks she might be able to sell - she doesn't know what's out there. She's been trapped inside for a year, and the world outside is a terrifyingly unknown entity now.

She is halfway out the door when she runs into Derek.

"What are you doing?" he asks. He's out of breath, like he's been running, and she's functioning on the adrenaline of the pain still shooting up through her arms.

"Leaving," Lydia says. "I'm - come with me."

It's the most foolish thing she's ever done; he's a werewolf. He's a werewolf and she's finally free of the mess she was trapped in.

"What?" Derek stares at her for a long moment.

"There are _humans_ ," Lydia tells him. "Humans who are alive and free, and I'm going to find them."

There's a long moment of silence.

"Fine," Derek says, and it sounds stilted. "Give me ten minutes to get my things."

"In eleven," Lydia tells him, "I'm gone."

\--

It's not what she had imagined, wasting away in Peter's rooms. She had painted Derek as a white knight atop a horse, and he's more like a sullen partner in her schemes. She'd imagined that the outside had turned into a barren wasteland, a post-apocalyptic desert of nothing that reflected her life, and she'd been wrong about that, too; it's just the way it always was, with fewer buildings and more crumbling, post-war remains standing with only half the structure intact.

Perhaps it's better this way. It's not the fantasy she concocted in her mind to get her through the worst of the darkness.

In reality, Derek has a car.

"They'll track us," he tells her, grimly, as she slides into the passenger seat. It feels strange to sit there - like something from another time, another place. "But we can get a head start. Where are we headed?"

"I don't know," Lydia admits.

Derek just sets his jaw, grits his teeth, and drives.

\--

Lydia makes him pull over after a half an hour. They are well out of town, on the back roads that are less-used without the human population roaming them - the sun overhead is warm for wintertime but feels glorious on her skin, even when it's just her arm, resting by the window. She makes Derek stop so that she can get out of the car and run halfway into the ditch by the side of the road, arms outstretched.

It's fresh air - real air, not recycled air that's being piped through the building. She sucks in lungful after lungful, and it's so sweet that it almost burns. She buries her hands in the dirt just to feel the granules sliding between her fingers.

"Oh my god," she giggles, giddy and hysterical, when she hears Derek approach from behind her. "I just - I never thought this would be real again."

There is mud embedded in her knees from her position, and she laughs at that, too.

"Lydia," Derek warns, voice low.

It's hard to pull herself back in. She's too elated, and she's not focusing on the actual problem - she registers that, but the emotions are still difficult to work through. She finally pushes herself back to her feet, wiping her palms on the silk of her skirt. She's happy to dirty it with more.

"Okay," she says. "We can go now."

\--

It hits her that night, later, after they've found an abandoned cabin nestled within what used to be a cliff-side cabin. There isn't much of a forest around it, so Derek thinks they'll be safe. Without trees, the wolves won't have much interest in the location.

It's obvious that it hasn't been used in awhile, possibly since the wars began, and they have to clear out a lot of the cobwebs and animal nests that have collected inside. Lydia feels fine when she curls up on the mattress with a musty blanket pulled over her form, but the backlash catches her off-guard. She has a dream of Peter, poised over her with his hands around her neck, suffocating her and squeezing the life out of her lungs.

She wakes beating her fists against the person straddling her. It takes a moment to realize that it's just Derek, and another few to actually stop her own flailing limbs, and through it all, she's still screaming - still hysterical.

"I can feel him," she sobs; the racking movement burns all the way through, with each wheezing gasp of breath. She tears at the silk covering her. It's all she has to wear, and it stinks of him, even to her non-werewolf senses. He's everywhere, he's all around her, and she has to get rid of it.

She digs her nails in and rips off strips of the fabric, feeling a pang of pleasure with each bit she tears free. With Derek's help, she pulls all of it apart until there is nothing left, until she's lying on the bed in her panties and nothing else, shaking and still crying, but free of the influence that was covering her.

Derek stays where he is, presumably to make sure that she's alright, but doesn't move to touch her. She's never had a man sitting above her, when she's wearing practically nothing, who didn't try something. Her body quakes with the force of her cries until she launches herself up and wraps her arms around Derek's shoulders - he does touch her then, gingerly, as if he's afraid that she'll break.

"He's gone," he murmurs. Maybe he knows for sure - maybe Peter really is dead. Either way, the sentiment helps. "He's gone."

It takes a long time before Lydia feels well enough to let him go. She doesn't sleep any more that night. They find some old clothes in the closet that are two sizes too large, and she wears those the next day. Even with the unpleasantness of wearing someone else's things, she still feels better in the old, musty cotton.

\--

They drive the next day, and don't talk about it. When it becomes too much to bear, Lydia barks out, "Stop the car."

As soon as Derek has pulled over to the side and put it in park, she lunges at him. She catches him a bit by surprise, enough that his mouth is open when she finds it with her own - she tugs at his lower lip, clutching his face with her hands. She doesn't really even think to see if he's responding until she realizes that he is, that he's wrapped his arms around her shoulders and is kissing her back at least as desperately as she is kissing him. She doesn't know where she begins and he ends - it's just them, in the stuffy interior of the car, under the intensifying sun as they make their way south.

"We may never find them," she gasps into his mouth, and then shifts to drag her tongue down the length of his neck, the curve of his jaw, and up towards his ear. She can feel him shiver - it reverberates through all her nerves.

"I know," he replies; it comes out more groan than anything else.

He half-drags, half-picks her up and moves her to his lap, so she's straddling him in the driver's seat and the steering wheel is jammed up into her back. She doesn't even care. She feels better with him beneath her hands than she has in over a year. She doesn't even think about Peter - just Derek, Derek and how his pulls off her shirt and her hair goes everywhere, how he slides his thumb over her nipple just to hear her gasp.

When she comes, the gear shift is digging into her leg and her back is aching from the awkward angle - she's unbearably hot, with sweat beading on her forehead and running down her face. Her own name is dragged from Derek's mouth when he follows, head smacking into the headrest.

She's never felt so alive.

She never thought she'd feel alive again.

\--

"Where are we going?" he asks, on the dawning of their third day on the road.

Lydia thinks about it for a few minutes. She thinks of the maps she used to know by heart, the concentrations of soldiers where the advantage was best. She knew the lay of the land and the methods of attacking - if she remembers them, then the others, the ones still alive, probably do, too. There's a pattern to any guerilla attack. She just has to find it.

"Along the southern border," she says, finally, rolling the syllables over on her tongue. "Where there are miles of open spaces the wolves can't hide in."

She needs a shower. They both do, but she suspects it's worse for Derek, who is more keenly aware of the smells around him. She wants more food than the few staples she grabbed on her way out of the mansion. But the windows are rolled down, and she can feel the wind on her face, and for now, it's enough. She'll survive.

She's been through worse.

"So, Mexico?" he asks.

Well, she _has_ always wanted to go visit.

"Mexico," she agrees.


End file.
